Good-bye 2023!
The year now closing soon on the East Coast of the United States has already exited in other parts of the world. For many it was a memorable year, but not in a good way. So, good riddance to all that!
Methbot: the Method by Which Russians Are Stealing Millions of Digital Advertising Dollars From Advertisers and Publishers Every Day
Here we present the last of the articles which relate to the horrors Facebook has helped unleash on the world that my company, the Joss Group, published in the now defunct Digital Marketing Report newsletter. In this article, originally published in the January 2017 issue, we present a harrowing tale of theft on a dizzying scale. When you read the article, I want you to think about what Putin might be doing with this money and how the same approach used…
Facebook Should be Worried About the FTC and Here is Why
Last week several news outlets, including the Washington Post, ran articles saying the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating Facebook, and a few days later the FTC officially confirmed the reports. Most of the articles said the FTC is looking into how Facebook has been butchering an agreement the FTC reached with the company back in 2011 regarding Facebook’s mis-use of user data back then. If the FTC concludes Facebook ignored the agreement, it could fine the company tens of…
Theft on Auto-Pilot: Bot Fraud in Digital Advertising or How to Waste Millions of Dollars Without Really Trying
Bots are digital robots programmed to do something online. Okay, there is a lot more to what bots are and what they do, but for now let’s just go with this quick definition. Bots are doing a lot of bad things online. One of the most costly things they do online (costly for advertisers and marketers) is pretend to be human and to look at digital advertising. Several times we wrote in the Digital Marketing Report about such misdeeds and…
What Vizio was Doing Behind the TV Screen (Hint: It is Creepy, Very Creepy)
What Facebook has been caught out doing is bad, really, really bad. And, there is much more to this horrible story to come out in the news, much, much more. Meanwhile, here is a story we published in the February 20, 2017 issue of the Digital Marketing Report newsletter. I have uploaded it here as two JPEG images. Here, though, is some of the text from the article (in case you cannot enlarge the page images enough to read them):…
The Trade-off Fallacy: How Marketers are Misrepresenting American Consumers and Opening Them up to Exploitation
I have decided, in light of the shocking disclosures about Facebook which have come to light during the past few days, to share some of the content from a Digital Marketing Report, a monthly newsletter for digital marketing professionals we published for two years (May 2015 through May 2017). For various reasons I made the decision in 2017 to stop publishing the report. One of the reasons, admittedly, was disappointing subscription numbers. But, as I suspected then and now, many (not…
How to Spot and React to a Twitter Troll Bot
Twitter troll bots are not new. Reports of them have been surfacing in the tech media world for years now. They are bits of computer code which comb through tweets looking for keywords, hashtags, and phrases. They can be programmed to follow certain Twitter handles, as well. When they see one they have been programmed to spot, they respond with something nasty designed to intimidate, frighten, etc. It is important to realize these are bots, and not people, when something…
Dystopia — Discover
At Tabula Candida, a site of satirical stick-figure comics, history teacher Erik Jensen comments on contemporary news and media. via Dystopia — Discover
Digital Advertising Content Match Fail!!
I have spent more than a few hours this week pondering and writing about digital advertising. I had just wrapped up this week’s writing projects and decided to take a quick break looking at Pinterest. The Joss Group has several boards on the site, including one about baking and cooking. Today I saw a nice image something called Cranberry Christmas Cake–goodie! I clicked through and was reading the details and scrolling for the recipe when a digital ad popped up (see…